


in [time redacted] [location redacted] we write letters

by ioncehadabrain



Series: the year of letting go [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24790045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ioncehadabrain/pseuds/ioncehadabrain
Summary: "how did you do it, Tenten-san.""I have no idea. I was this close to burning everything down, you know. there is a story but I don’t think I can tell it right now, as we're both drunk, and I don't think I can quite feel my tongue in my mouth, Hinata.""you wanted to burn everything down, Tenten-san? I hope it wasn’t the Hyuuga mansion.""close, but that was not it. I was taught that I should never lash out on innocent objects, because inanimate objects on their own are never at fault, but rather it is us wicked humans that burden them with horrible symbolism. unless it is for entertainment, unless in their destruction I find genuine joy- I don’t think I have reached that level of self-conceitedness yet.""this story must have something to do with Neji-niisan then.""you are incredibly well-versed in the art of reading minds."(...half-letters, to put down in writing what's happening in our minds.)
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Series: the year of letting go [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1018185
Kudos: 2





	in [time redacted] [location redacted] we write letters

**Author's Note:**

> found this in my drafts - I think it's been there for maybe 2 years now, and I really ... don't think I want to finish this? To this day I myself have no answer as to how Tenten must have dealt with it, either, so I just- do the- irresponsible thing and uh just- leave it as it is.

My dearest,

You asked me the other day how to confront a reality so strange you didn’t think you would ever find it in you to see it for what it was, let alone to accept it, let alone to reconcile. I can provide no real strategic advice, I’m afraid, but if you’re talking about coping, I could offer you a piece of my mind. When Neji died, you remember, I was quite calm. But thinking back-

You know, thinking back to a couple of years ago, when the war was just over, I think at some point I must have gone quite mad. 

There was a while we- that is, your cousin and I, and sometimes Gai-sensei, and Lee, too, I suspect, since there are technically no secrets between us as long as you find your place and tag along- for quite a while we frequented the Konoha public library and dug up all sorts of documents there were about chakra mappings across various chakra-based jutsus. That was a lot, to summarize the matter in as gross an understatement as the way we teach kids at school. But we thought there ought to be something we could do about him and his crazy reliance on the byakugan. We thought- powerful stuff, but it could kill him, those eyes and their significance. We wanted to reduce his dependence on the byakugan in strategic combat. The only way to do this, theoretically, was to commit chakra mappings to memory, coupled with accumulating as much knowledge as possible about chakra mapping variances, technique-based. The goal was for him to employ this knowledge in battles so that even with the byakugan compromised, he would still stand a pretty good chance fighting and surviving. Unless, of course, should he happen to stand in the way of deadly bijuu claws and become a flesh shield, there was no return from it, as reality had proved. Anyways, it was- our research goal was ultimately more or less an impossible deed; there is only so much one could gain from dated books, because the world is ever-revolving and there is never a limit to what one could do. Under normal circumstances, though, as long as the enemy wasn’t some sort of freak god, our theory worked quite well. He still had the byakugan at his disposal, and he usually had a team. Most of the times, he had us. We did, may I say, spectacularly, and for a while, for us, this alone sufficed. 

When he died- I usually say “when he died,” while what I really meant was when he fell, the exact moment when he fell to the ground – it was ridiculous. I found it so blatantly ridiculous, and so very him. It was so very him. (I should remind you that this was the way I felt back when I was, as I said, going quite mad. Resentful self-vindication was the tide I was riding on, and he always talked about fate- see, I am still blaming him somewhat- so I blamed him.) It was like something he would say just to spite me after we spared, and then he would pretend to be deep in meditation and he wouldn’t faze when I aimed a kunai somewhere a millimeter above his head, though he would if I somehow found a way to get his hair into the game. It was so ridiculous to me at the time, I thought, we had done all these things, we had developed his techniques so extensively, in a way which we were sure was unprecedented in his clan, at least according to the written records we managed to find, and then just like this, in the blink of an eye he got himself skewered and just died? Fine, so be it, we had a war going on. Lee was crying, he was wailing, and all I could think was: ridiculous. 

After it was all over, I went to the library. I was thinking of developing this new technique, but I was at loss for inspirations, and Neji wasn’t there to provide his opinions – usually grumpily so, because I always grabbed him just when he was about to have lunch, I did that on purpose. Then I thought of our good old research project, and I thought, sure, if I couldn’t have the man, why not use his notes? So I checked out every single book and scroll we had touched, I kept a list and I traced them down to their last, including even the ones that had turned out to be of no use at the time. I spent my nights there, in the village library. It wasn’t before long that I completely abandoned my original intention to merely flip through pages and try to absorb everything. I am no genius, my memory functions just as that of an average person- this I was aware of, and I knew, too, how my actions were beyond any rational purposes, and yet, I couldn’t seem to strategically think myself out. I kept coming back for the books. I was searching for something, for any fragments I could find to make sense of. At some point, I think I started counting pages. The books and the scrolls that he had read- I imagined I could tell which ones he was in charge of, scavenging for a useful line- well, I could, actually, I kept a list of everything we checked out, just for the sake of staying organized. I was looking at everything for a few months, at first, before my focus shifted entirely and solely to those texts which he personally read. I counted the pages. I took out the notes we made, and I estimated which pages in a book he read in whole, then I counted them and jotted down a number. I calculated them in percentage. The number that came up the most was 67%, give or take a few decimates. 67, such an arbitrary number: it showed, I thought, how we usually had to plunge our way through more than half of what the texts had to offer, only to arrive at a conclusion some tens of pages later that there was only so much to salvage, and we were once again stuck in the ruts. I knew, objectively speaking, that it was the only significance this number should have, and yet, I kept drilling, tracing my way back on those documents. All those nights I had spent with scraps of papers, with old notes and new numbers that never could go together in a sensible way- this was a fact that I knew back then, but it was only later that I allowed it to sink in my awareness. In the heart of a labyrinth of knowledge and attempts to make sense, none of what I was doing made sense. In the heart of a war that was supposedly an attempt to make sense of the way this world went about, an attempt to right the wrongs, to correct past trajectories, his death didn’t make sense. Neji, dead? It was a fact, a fixed point, a done deal, just like how for his entire life he had struggled with the double-edge of possessing the byakugan the way he did. But I was the under the impression that we had found a way, a loophole, out of that situation, that I had helped him bend the rules he had known all his life, so why couldn’t I dispute something similarly outrageous, like his death, in my world? Forgive me for being so awfully self-conceited: I didn’t care whatever purpose there had been in his sacrifice, I didn’t care about Naruto, or you, or the result of the war, I only cared that it was at his expense. For the longest time, I couldn’t make sense of a world in which Hyuuga Neji had died, and nothing else mattered. 

It had scared me, I suppose, the moment the thought came into focus, the extent of madness I was allowing myself to spiral into. I sealed everything in a scroll: the lists of research documents from back then, the old notes we made, the delirious scribbles I made, the remnants of battered pencils that I had exhausted to the point of being shrunk to a size impossible for usage. Everything. I entertained the thought of going to his grave and burning them all even if they never could reach him, my anger, my confusion, my pleas- his death carried carried in its tone such finality. I was raised to believe that I could always feel the lingering presence of a gone beloved in the faintest trace of flower when spring came, but Neji himself was the only meaningful memento of our shared time. Yet another ridiculous fact that I could not dispute. It pained me that I could feel him no more, that he so thoroughly vanished off my reality, even though people still speak of him and his heroic deeds so often those days- people: those who heard about him from the myriad post-war memorials, those who fought in the war, those who were there, our friends, Gai-sensei, Lee. I wanted to get it over with. I wanted to light them all on fire: the remnants of our time together, which had been rendered meaningless, out of place, without him walking and breathing by my side. I wanted to burn them in front of his grave and to watch the winds carry the ashes to some far-off place, far away from here. To a place where they could eventually make sense again.

In the end, I gave the scroll to Lee. It was selfish: Lee couldn’t unseal the scroll himself. But he wouldn’t, anyway. He came to find me, he told me- he said: give it to me. Give it to me. I swear, as long as every year there comes the spring, I will keep it safe for you. Go on your missions. Build houses. Have some tea while you’re at it. On the road, like you’ve always said. And when you come back, maybe also on a spring day, like today, if you still want to destroy it, I will give it back to you. I will happily help you light the fire myself. But for now-

So, you see, Hinata, my dear. I have no wisdom to offer, no final conclusion to profess. I only know that, the other night, when I got back, and we were drinking together, in the back of your apartment, as the day broke-

It was yet again spring. 

[...]


End file.
